Irving Babbitt (August 2, 1865 – July 15, 1933) was a Harvard literary scholar and cultural thinker. Babbitt’s books include; Literature and the American College (1908); In The New Laokoon (1910); The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912); Rousseau and Romanticism (1919) & Democracy and Leadership (1924).

Teenage Russell Kirk: His First Academic Article

By |2015-05-19T23:13:36-05:00August 31st, 2011|Categories: Aristotle, Bradley J. Birzer, Classics, Conservatism, Heroism, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Russell Kirk|

Below are quotes from Russell Kirk’s first published academic article, “Tragedy and the Moderns.” The article appeared in January 1940, when Kirk was just beginning his second semester of his senior year in college. He wrote it, however, during either his freshman or sophomore year at Michigan State, under and with the encouragement of his [...]

Democracy and Leadership: Irving Babbitt’s Classic

By |2018-10-16T20:25:22-05:00May 18th, 2011|Categories: Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leadership, RAK, Russell Kirk|Tags: |

Irving Babbitt Democracy and Leadership, first published in 1924, still is in print at the end of a whole generation. This new printing indicates how little ephemerae found their way into the body of Babbitt’s writings, and how he foresaw, far more clearly than his opponent John Dewey, the great issues of the [...]

Irving Babbitt: Moral Imagination & Progressive Education

By |2019-07-23T14:06:31-05:00August 5th, 2010|Categories: Education, Featured, Glenn Davis, Irving Babbitt, Liberal Learning|Tags: |

When Literature and the American College, Irving Babbitt’s critique of the new educational theories, was first published in 1908, it was a shot fired across the bow of the ship of progressive reform in American higher education. Babbitt fired a sound shot, but he lost the war. Since that time, educational reform has run through [...]

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